The frustrations took such a dark turn recently that he contacted a relative with an ominous request: ‘Would you take my daughter?’

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A member of the San Jose Police Department photographs a truck near the scene where five people were killed on Habbitts Court on Monday, June 24, 2019, in San Jose, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

The frustrations took such a dark turn recently that he contacted his wife’s cousin with an ominous request.

“He called me and he said, ‘Would you take my daughter?’” the cousin, To V Khuat, said in an interview. “He said he was going to kill them. He had said things like this before, but I had always talked him down, calmed him down.”

The suspected gunman has been identified through law-enforcement sources and neighbors as 66-year-old Chi Dinh Ta. Police found Ta dead in a side yard from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound around 1:25 a.m. Monday after officers entered his Habbitts Court home following shooting reports Sunday night.

As police tried to piece together what triggered the shooting rampage, Khuat, whose wife is Ta’s cousin, said in an interview that the gunman had often spoken to him about his troubles with his family.

“He was jealous that his wife was able to sponsor her family and he was not able to bring his family here because of things in his record,” Khuat said. “That is the cause.”

Police had no immediate comment on the relative’s account Tuesday. Investigators have not announced a motive for the massacre or named victims pending formal identification and notification of their next of kin by the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office, though all are believed to be family members. The coroner had no additional information Tuesday morning. Ta’s wife and daughter fled to safety during the rampage.

Police said Monday the gunman has no known history of domestic violence, and it was unclear how he obtained the semiautomatic pistol he reportedly used in the shootings, as he has no firearms registered in his name.

Public records indicate Ta’s only criminal history in Santa Clara County was a 1998 misdemeanor conviction for driving while intoxicated that has since been purged from his record. He also appears to have a handful of unspecified charges in Orange County from the late 1990s to 2006 for which records were not immediately available. They did not appear to be serious.

West Coast representatives of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency had no immediate comment Tuesday as to whether Ta had sought sponsorship of relatives from Vietnam and whether his record would have been a barrier.

Khuat said the slain family members “had just come from Vietnam” and “had not been here long.” He said they “were the nicest people” and “didn’t do anything” to Ta to provoke his anger.

Thy Vo covers government in Santa Clara County and the city of Santa Clara for The Mercury News. She's a Southern California native and started her journalism career watchdogging local government in Orange County, California for the nonprofit news website Voice of OC.